


Motifs

by A_Starry_Night



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Gen, Magical Realism, Mythology References, mythological creatures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:47:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25469524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Starry_Night/pseuds/A_Starry_Night
Summary: Retelling the story of Broadchurch, but with a mythological twist. That's it. That's the story.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	1. Ellie Miller

“It was Joe.”

In the quiet Hardy’s voice was still soft, but it seemed to land between them like a thundering clap, and Ellie’s head jerked like she was shooing an irksome fly. For just a moment he could see her irises flash a sickly yellow, and his breath caught in his throat; he was perhaps the only one who knew the full danger his words could bring down upon them all—but it seemed like her disbelief and naivety would be their saving grace.

“No- what the fuck? No, he didn’t. He didn’t.” 

Denial was a powerful thing, and Hardy cursed himself later for believing that Ellie had more control over herself than he’d hoped.

She had control, Ellie would argue later; even while screaming at Joe she held back and forced back her rage as he tearfully confessed to killing Danny Latimer, she’d kept to the opposite side of the room as she cried that Danny had been eleven, and had bitten on her tongue as Joe helplessly shook his head and gave her no answer to this fact.

And then he asked for Tom.

They’d all of them forgotten the ancient warnings, less relevant in this age of normalcy and the less magical and supernatural, but no less important when it came to a Changeling: never threaten harm to a mother dragon’s hatchlings.

Her answering scream of rage echoed with an underlying roar; her fingernails sharpened to claws and scales began to break out on her skin as she set upon her husband, swearing and screaming and so frenzied she didn’t think to go for the killing blow. Her eyes shone a reptilian yellow and smoke wreathed her head in an unmistakable way as she laid him out on the floor. 

In the end it was Hardy who ultimately probably saved Joe Miller’s life. Amidst all of the security guards in the room standing in utter shock at their colleague’s transformation, he alone moved to intervene, slipping in between the spaces of her claws with a speed and surprising grace that defied his illness.

“Miller! Stop.”

Even though Ellie was half-Changed he still had a foot on her; she wasn’t very big even as a dragon, but dragons were fierce— even vicious when provoked—and the guards in the room all shifted in dread thinking he would be ripped apart, too. But Ellie herself was old enough as a Changeling to notice when a being was both older and tougher than herself; being only three hundred, she was still incredibly young in the eyes of her fellow Changelings. 

Hardy, she realized with her dragon’s senses in a detached way, wasn’t very human at all. There was an underlying growl to his order that caught her attention, a sudden shift in his posture that spoke of a predator, a show of danger she’d never seen before. The human in her continued to rail and scream at Joe, but the dragon recognized she should not attempt to fight past him. 

It made her no less furious. “Kill you,” she hissed at the cowering figure that was her murdering husband. “Kill you kill you _killyou_!”

The human guards would be no help to lead her out. “Get him up,” Hardy ordered them, “and get him to a cell. Ward the door against her.”

“Sir,” PC Gideon dared to speak up, “I- we don’t have an available witch on hand—”

“Go find one then,” Hardy snapped. “Until then, Miller and I will be in my office. Do not disturb us until I give you the go-ahead, is that clear?”

It took nearly twenty minutes for Ellie to calm herself down enough that she could resort back to her fully human appearance. The sharp claws on her hands was the last of the dragon to disappear, a detail Hardy was careful to note, and all that was left was a shivering wreck of a woman who had just been dealt the most serious betrayal. “How did I not see it?” she whispered, perhaps entirely to herself, and he didn’t have an answer for her—not one that wouldn’t send her flying off in a rage again, anyway. He left her to her thoughts until he called Gideon for an update of Joe Miller’s incarceration/protection and watched her leave with hunched shoulders and sudden age dug deep into her face with a mix of bemusement and pity. Young though she was for a Changeling, Hardy didn’t know how she hadn’t become more cynical before now; her parents must have raised her in a sheltered life, as some were wont to do, but he hated that it was this that had made her open her eyes to the worst life had to offer.

It wasn’t until he was alone in his hotel room at the Traders that he allowed his amusement to surface. A bloody dragon. It was so obvious in hindsight, they should have seen it sooner.

~/~/~/~/~

“Addie! Addie, where are you?”

The forest was dark and forbidding in the deepening dusk, but Eleanor—not yet seven—was in no way prepared to head home. Her friend was missing, and she would not leave Adeline out here alone. 

Still. It was frightening, and there was no telling who or what was out here with them. It was a strict rule in both of their households: never traverse the forests alone at night. She was beginning to realize why that was. 

“Addie, please! This isn’t funny anymore!” It had only meant to be an innocent traverse to the shallow creek that cut through the land; the ocean was still a dull rumble in the background, the final stop in the road of the Earth. She and Adelaide were meant to be home before the sun set, and before their parents found out they were missing, but they had become separated in a game of seeking for the will-o-wisps, and now it was growing dangerously late. 

She was nearing Warlock’s Grave when she heard the rustling of the river-reeds, the low warning hiss of a predator, and she froze in her tracks, her heart very nearly stopped in her chest. Premonition robbed her of her voice and she slowly, carefully, crept forward.

_Never traverse the forests alone at night_.

She didn’t scream; she barely reacted. What she felt was too great to express, a fiery rage that swept through her at the sight of Adelaide’s body held in the grasp of the grindylow. A growl of her own was building in her throat before human instinct, her parent’s lessons, stopped her short from outright attacking the creature. When she hesitated, fear rushed in. Adelaide’s face was white, whiter than snow and as equally cold by now, she was sure, and there was nothing she could do for her friend. 

She hated herself for it later, but she turned and ran. 

It was a harsh reality. Adelaide’s body was never recovered, most likely dragged beneath the waters by the grindylow and fed upon, and Eleanor was in tears as she explained what had happened to her parents.

“It’s too upsetting for her,” Father fretted that night, after they had tucked their daughter into bed. “Should we bring Agatha here to—to erase her memory?”

Mother was more philosophical about it; already she had seen signs of something Other in their daughter’s bearing, awakened by this horrid happenstance. “No. No, I think that this will be to her benefit. Give it time.”

And time they gave her, but what it was that Mother saw did not take long to surface. Eleanor was merely seven, young for a Changeling, but a week from the time she lost Adelaide the little girl’s skin broke out in shimmering sea-green scales and her teeth sharpened to needle points. She went to bed that night with smoke wreathing her head and in the morning her parents found a small dragon curled up in her bedding.

It was a strange, beautiful thing. When Ellie was born the world was already aged and the olden days were long passed; the rules between magic and supernatural had solidified in the last few centuries, and therefore the people dwelling between them knew the rules that were laid out for them all. Changelings were growing rarer for every passing decade, every century, as humanity evolved and started pruning out the more extraordinary traits of their forefathers. 

“Dear One,” Mother said to her, “you must stretch your wings and fly lest you forget yourself. A dragon is a respected creature, and you must learn control.”

Ellie did as Mother instructed; dragons were a rare but well-respected Changeling, powerful and fearsome no matter its size, but dragons were also vicious and cruel. It was crucial that she learn control no matter the circumstances; her childhood was a hard one as she was tested time and time again by her parents and pushed to her limits to learn absolute control. 

Being by the sea helped. The rules of magic and the supernatural were of a different nature to the ones in the waters, and Mother Nature was her own mistress; she faced dangers that most mainlanders would never have dreamt of—crashing waves hundreds of feet high in a storm, destructive winds, and of course the occasional appearance of one of the sea’s magical creatures. 

She was only twenty when she killed a grindylow that had dared to show its face. To shift from one form to the other was easy, almost instinctual after enough practice, but Eleanor chose not to Change often—she loved flying, loved spreading her wings and soaring high above the sea, but the dragon made others nervous, even mistrustful. As the years lengthened it became something of a legend on the shores of England, of a green dragon that danced above the waters. 

~/~/~/~/~

Believe it or not, Joe Miller was not Eleanor’s first husband. He most likely wouldn’t even be the last—her kind tended to live for centuries, if not for thousands of years. Not many fell into the latter category, though; Changelings more often than not met a messy or violent end either in the meeting of ordinary humans who didn’t understand them, or they killed each other while Changed. Those that were around the thousand-year mark were the true mythological creatures—those who were fairies or brownies or sphinxes who made themselves appear human when it suited them.

Eleanor—now insisting that others call her Ellie—was nearly a hundred when she met and married Albert. It was a good marriage, a solid sturdy union that was more of a match than a powerplay more commonly found in the day. It happened quite by accident, and it probably wouldn’t have happened at all if dear Albert hadn’t discovered her Changeling form.

He didn’t mind that she would outlive him; the only thing she asked was that they bear no children—at the time she couldn’t bear the thought of outliving her offspring, too. He truly was extraordinary in that he agreed with her request.

They were married for nearly forty years, before he was struck down by influenza. 

Times were changing; the world was shifting, growing, and Ellie felt stifled where she was. Her parents had not been blessed with her gift, and so they had both died several decades ago. She moved farther along the coast and found herself invested in many different ventures as time went on. When she was almost two hundred she married again, this time to a banker by the name of William, but he died in the War. That very nearly killed her.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she admitted to the doctor she visited. He was a warlock who had decided to settle amongst the ever-growing population of ordinary humans, and it was easy to see why he was such a popular place for peoples of both kinds to seek him out. He was both knowledgeable and competent, and Ellie had visited him a few times before. “I’m so listless anymore, and lately there’s been a pain in my chest like I’m being squeezed. I can’t sleep at night.”

“Loss of appetite? Weight?” At her nod, the warlock hummed softly under his breath. “How long has it been since you lost William, then, Eleanor?”

He was the only one who called her Eleanor anymore. The question very nearly doubled her over again, unprepared as she was for the question, and her chest gave an equally powerful throb in tandem. “Six months,” she gasped out when she was able to speak again. 

The warlock nodded. “Whatever the fully human fools believe nowadays, Eleanor, the rules of magic still stand. They can and will still affect us, and they affect the heart just as much as any of our other organs. Mary Todd Lincoln, after all, very nearly died of a broken heart when she lost her husband, President Abraham Lincoln. She lost her mind, instead.”

“And what about myself?” Ellie asked, half-afraid of the answer. “Will I suffer my mind going as well?”

The warlock smiled gently. “You have nothing to fear from that, Eleanor. Your heart has taken a serious hurt with your losing William, of that there is no doubt, but you are still quite young yet. It is easier for Changelings such as yourself, already strong of character and heart, to live through such loss. It’s when you grow older that it becomes harder, when you have grown more attached, more tired.”

So there it was. Ellie tried to find some semblance of a normal life again in her city, but the landscape had changed, the War was in high gear, and it was impossible to ignore the loss that blanketed all of England. She took to Changing at night and taking flight, hiding her dragon form in the clouds so as to not attract attention, and finally her bruised heart healed again.

She found herself lonely for several more years before she stumbled quite by accident on the seaside town of Broadchurch. It was a rather older town even now, rugged and un-tamable, and she fell in love with it immediately; here was a place still touched by the memory of uncontrolled magic, of the days when wood nymphs were easily and readily seen in the forests, when witches and their ilk were still free from being either hunted or used by the government for warding or protection. She settled down and made herself a life.

The rest, as they say, was history.

~/~/~/~/~

She found out what Hardy was—not who he was, mind, that was a particularly important distinction—midway through their investigating Sandbrook. Unlike with Albert, this was not quite by accident; the realization that he wasn’t quite as human as he appeared had been niggling the back of her mind for months, and when she truly started to look and categorize it started to coalesce into a clearer picture. 

His frequent habit of biting the proverbial hand that fed him was one. He had almost no social awareness to speak of, and it wasn’t simply a condition that made him like that. She let her suspicions lie, though, content to simply observe until she stumbled on more of the puzzle.

Sandbrook kept her more than occupied, after all. And this detective life certainly led her into the paths of more witches and warlocks and Changelings than she would have first imagined, Beth Latimer being a selkie notwithstanding, because while Lee Ashworth was completely and totally human, Claire was either an Unseelie or a witch. 

What truly tipped her off about Hardy, though, was Fred. 

Her youngest son, despite sharing her looks, had not inherited her outgoing, social manner; he was not an overtly social child, and he was downright shy in the company of those he didn’t know. He also detested being picked up and held by any grown man, too confused as to why ‘Daddy’ wasn’t there like he always had been before. 

That same unwillingness was there with Hardy, of course, but still Ellie was caught off-guard by the ease that existed between her son and her boss. Fred babbled and entertained himself, happy to play by himself if he had a toy in front of him, but there was none of the suspicion or fussing Ellie had come to expect from him when he was in Hardy’s company. And although he was much more subtle about it, Ellie noticed eventually that despite his apparently single-minded focus on the case, Hardy kept a studious eye on Fred most of the time. More often, actually, than even she did.

Come to think of it, Ellie began to notice just how much Hardy kept an eye on her, too; sometimes it was with the intensity of a predator, sometimes as a soft look that seemed strange on him but also right, but wherever they were he kept an eye on the both of them. It got to the point where he maneuvered his way into pushing Fred’s pram and herded them down the various paths or roads of Broadchurch as he and Ellie pored over Sandbrook’s files.

If it felt like he was guarding both Ellie and Fred from, well, maybe everything, it was probably what he was doing. He didn’t seem to realize he was doing it, though, so Ellie spared him and carefully began to file his little quirks in a mental folder to allow the picture she was making coalesce.

Then finally there came the late night when Ellie had been called back to Devon on an emergency; she’d been hesitant about bundling Fred up as he’d already gone to sleep for the night, and he never took well to being woken before morning, but she was also hesitant about allowing Hardy to watch her toddler. 

“Jus’ go, Miller,” he said impatiently, waving her away with his usual vague dismissiveness. “I won’t eat him as soon as your back is turned.”

That was a very specific choice of words, and more literal than she first thought as she found out. She came back to Broadchurch later the next day to find that her boss and her son had indeed survived each other, and Hardy’s little seaside shack was still standing. When she was gathering up Fred’s things and buckling him into his car seat, she found short black hairs on his shirt. 

Ellie paused in her actions and gently lifted one of them from Fred’s shirt collar, staring down at it with a mix of amusement and intrigue. Some kind of animal hair, but she wasn’t sure if it was cat or dog. Bending down closer to her son, she lifted his sleeve and sniffed it. Yep—she wrinkled her nose and drew back. That was definitely dog.

“So what kind of creature are you, then, sir?” she asked Hardy weeks later, when she had drawn her conclusions and felt safe enough in them to ask. For his part, he seemed only mildly surprised at her question, and maybe a little proud too.

“What do you think, Miller? You’ve got some ideas.”

“One, anyway,” she said bluntly. “You’re a Grim, aren’t you?”

He side-eyed her for a long moment, half of his attention still on the pegboard of information she had placed on his wall. Then the tip of his mouth twitched in an attempt at a wry grin. “I don’t generally advertise it.”

“I can see why.” Grims, or black dogs or as they were unimaginatively called sometimes, had an interesting history, and not all of the legends were good ones. They weren’t associated with death for nothing, after all, but she supposed that was why Hardy seemed so much surrounded by it. “How old are you, then? I met a Seelie once who was almost a thousand years old.”

Now he turned his attention away from the pegboard and thought about it for a long time. “Dunno, exactly. I remember Richard the Lionheart, at least. Right bloodthirsty bastard he was, too.”

Ellie giggled despite herself. “There were legends of him being a Changeling, too, you know,” she said after a moment. “That his Lionheart moniker wasn’t just a title.”

He snorted, once again back to his usual brusque self. “Isn’t that obvious, Miller? He was a griffin.”

And that was that. They solved Sandbrook, put the culprits away, and then Hardy left. And then he came back a few years later, but with his daughter in tow this time, and they picked up like they’d never left off. There were a few times, though, when she thought she would hear the sounds of a dog out in the middle of the night, patrolling the town and cemetery, and she would know exactly who it was that was doing so. She solved cases with Hardy in the day and never mentioned his occasional nighttime runs, and generally bickered and disguised their friendship beneath vitriolic back and forth, and they were both of them content to remain that way.

And then their paths collided with Sherlock Holmes’s. 

But that was a story for another day.


	2. Alec Hardy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize now for the wait on this chapter. TW for the rest of this A/N: I triggered myself four days ago by watching a video criticizing Thirteen Reasons Why. Anyone who, like me, hasn't ever actually watched this show or read this book but suffers from depression and suicidal thoughts, I strongly advise from ever treading into its territory. Completely unrelated to this story, I know, but even seeing the few clips I did in the video seriously fucked me up depression-wise, and I want all of you who have those same difficulties to be safe. DO NOT watch Thirteen Reasons Why. Pertaining story wise to this A/N, if this chapter somehow seems disjointed or otherwise not entirely involved, that would be why.

“So, what sort of creature are you, then, sir?”

Miller’s question wasn’t surprising. Not really. Granted, he was a bit taken aback by its timing, but not the inquiry itself. Hardy had known for quite some time that she was observing and cataloguing and generally being a competent investigator, and he’d had faith that she would eventually confront him about it all.

But, really, where was the fun in just _answering her_? “What do you think, Miller? You’ve got some ideas.” Maybe it was a character flaw but he loved pushing the envelope just a little bit, and she was especially easy to rile up.

It wasn’t quite so easy to do that as it had been before, though. “You’re a Grim, aren’t you?”

Was this the pride that teachers had their students when they finally started to surpass their lessons? He didn’t always know, and he didn’t normally ask. “I don’t generally advertise it.” Really, humans had some weird ideas and superstitions, and they didn’t like the idea of creatures of the supernatural or magical living amongst them; why else did whole branches of the wizarding world live in voluntary isolation from the rest of humankind?

But Miller took it better than most would have. He supposed being a Changeling made it a bit easier to do that, anyway, but still. It was nice not to have to put up with the fear and judgment that came from being something Other. He was a bit more taken aback by her inquiry about his age, but of course he probably shouldn’t have been—she was insatiably curious. The fact that she had met a Seelie at all was more surprising than hearing that they had been a thousand years old—any and all of the fairy class made it a rule to stay away from ordinary human civilization, too often brutalized and destroyed throughout the centuries to be willing to mingle. 

He didn’t often believe in the abilities or even the best of humanity—he simply wasn’t built for it—but he had to admit that something about Miller was truly special. So he didn’t mind their bantering now, and allowed her questions, although he was maybe a bit disappointed when she didn’t guess what Richard the Lionheart’s Changeling form was.  
Creatures that stood for nobility and leadership and courage—but were fierce and violent when otherwise provoked.

“Isn’t that obvious, Miller? He was a griffin.”

~/~/~/~/~

The only thing he could definitively say was that he was not born: he was _made_. He didn’t start out his existence as human, either. He was not a Changeling, he wasn’t bound by their rules of existence, but it had been so long since he’d been here that he’d begun to pick up some of the rules. Magic was a cruel and dangerous mistress in the olden days, as often a betrayer to its wielder as its savior, and in those days it was easier to remain in dog form, to wander and guard and generally fulfill a purpose that he had begun to forget was a specific one. 

Most of his kind did, eventually. Whether or not all his kind came from Hell, or if some truly had been dogs buried within the bounds of an early church’s cemetery, was impossible to know for sure, and he had never deemed it important enough to find out. Grims, black dogs—whatever humanity called them now—did not have a social structure, and neither did they socialize amongst each other, and most of their accidental meetings ended in blood.

They weren’t built to be social creatures. That was not their intended purpose.

Hardy didn’t lie when he said he remembered Richard the Lionheart; it wasn’t a human’s clear memories, though, nor did he share the same awed amazement when thinking of the past. For a Grim, time meant nothing, and the wars and Crusades of the ancient kings were mere squabbles for his kind. For him. 

No, what he didn’t tell Miller was that he thought he could recall England’s kings as far back as Edward the Elder and his son Athelstan. His age didn’t matter in this circumstance, and he didn’t want Miller looking at him with the same awe and awareness that she seemed to everything else that was from the Old Days.

There was nothing truly special about them. The sooner she learned that the better off she’d be. 

~/~/~/~/~

The thing about Grims that nobody seemed to realize was that they weren’t just dogs. They were intelligent and clever and resourceful, and most delighted in their own destructive tendencies. They were a destructive sort, that was something that none of them could dispute, but they could also be something worth getting on your side.

If they allowed it all. Many had died trying to harness them over the centuries; this was where the legends of their being surrounded by death perhaps originated from, but none of the Grims truly cared about that. 

They were a reality for no other reason, perhaps, than because of someone’s idea of a sick joke. Many of them caused death; attacks on churches, the sighting of them on dark roads at midnight, the deaths of many who wandered too far along the wrong paths. 

He hadn’t had a name. Not for centuries. As time passed and the world grew, and those of Changeling stock began to die out, so did the old Knowledge. Magic and the supernatural were something of a laughingstock; those warlocks and witches who remained in the eye of Ordinary society were mere guards, used to ward and defend, and creatures like him found it easier to traverse in open sight.

Changing from one skin to the other was instantaneous for him, a mere thought and a wish if only he willed it, and for many years he had not willed it. But dogs are a curious lot, if nothing else, and eventually he had become curious enough to wonder about the societies that had begun to develop. 

It was something of a horrified experiment, if nothing else. 

~/~/~/~/~

He watched the fur on his body disappear into pale skin, the sharp claws retract into flimsy nails; it was cold. How did humans survive without proper fur coats, anyway? The different fabrics they wore surely did nothing for warmth. 

And how did they manage to walk? What evolutionary trait decided it was easier to stand and move with only two legs rather than four?

Senses were duller than before, too, although he would come to know that his sense of smell was better than most humans’. The only thing that was actually better as a human was his sight, and what a marvel that was! He had never realized that such color existed, although again it took him a while to realize that such a wide array of them was even there to see.

“What are you doing with yourself this time, eh, lad? Got bored asking for treats from the humans?” The warlock named Henry was an odd fellow, but one that he had known now for several years, on and off. They weren’t anything close to friends, Henry wary around such a blatantly supernatural creature as a Grim, but they were allies in a way.

“Fuck off,” he growled in response, in no mood to deal with the warlock’s barbs. 

Henry smirked. “Doesn’t do much for manners, you know, that. You should brush up on those.”

“With all the bloodshed in the streets? I’ll make sure to ask someone to kill me _nicely_ , then.” Speech, the ability to talk, was another novelty even though it had taken him a bit to figure out how to do it. 

“ _Can_ someone kill you?” Henry asked, measuring out leeches for the potion brewing in his kitchen. 

“Dunno. Why, did you want to try?”

“Not particularly, no,” Henry said wryly, glancing at him. “I prefer to live out the day if you don’t mind. If you really wanted to test it, I’d go on up to the Hallow up north—I hear the wizards up there don’t have much fondness for Grims.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

It was another year before he met up with Henry again, and this time he was in Grim form, bleeding and torn. It was late enough at night his dark coat blended with the shadows, and those who happened to be standing on street corners shivered where they stood as he passed by. Henry was not an easily rattled man, having seen and fought in too many battles in his several decades, but he still trembled deep in his bones when he opened his door to find the giant black dog standing on his doorstep, caked with red mud and drying blood, amber eyes gleaming in the darkness like hellfire.

He didn’t attempt to close the door again, though; Grims were not ones to be stopped by something as simple as the physical, after all. Looking closer, he saw it wasn’t the ordinary humans who had attacked him. “I didn’t mean that you should take me seriously, you know,” he sighed. “The Hallow is protected for a reason.”

The Grim swiveled its head round and growled at him. There was dark blood still staining its teeth, and he froze. He didn’t breathe again until he was sure it wouldn’t decide to attack him, too, but he was careful to keep from repeating any smart remarks as he approached the wounded dog. 

He had never been so close to a Grim before, having been satisfied enough simply seeing his odd ally from a distance, but he was still taken aback by the _size_ of it. Larger than a wolf for certain, and blacker than midnight, but its rump was burned and its right back leg was bleeding. He very carefully maneuvered around the Grim’s space and gingerly inspected the wounds closer, prodding with careful fingers and his wand to get a better look. “Dark magic,” he murmured to himself, nodding in thought. “Something more than a simple Cutting spell—wait, this isn’t the _Killing Curse_ , is it?”

The Grim whined, very clearly asking a question even without a human’s vocal cords, and Henry sighed. 

“Green light, incantation is Avada Kedavra? _Yes_?” Henry blinked and sat back for a long moment. “Merlin. I suppose the legends are true, then. Grims are impervious to death. Don’t you dare try to shift forms, now, this’ll hurt worse if you’re human! I’m going to have to find some kind of potion that’ll counteract that burn, and then heal your leg, and it’s not going to be easy.”

It took an entire day to heal the wounds left by the curses that had ripped into the Grim’s hide, and in the following morning Henry found the Grim shifted into its’ human form, all lanky limbs and impatient energy. The amber eyes were still the same, though. “Got to work on that if you’re trying to pass as human,” he said as he sat down at his table.   
“Won’t be human too much,” came the gruff reply. 

“Any reason why you are, now?” 

“Wanted to see if the wounds show up on this form, too.” Shifting in a complicated manner that would be impossible for most humans he did just that; the burn from the Killing Curse was a darker smear of slightly marred skin, but nothing so horrific—the various cuts that had marked his leg and underbelly had all healed but the nastiest had left a long curved mark above his right hip bone.

“Could have been much worse,” Henry said matter-of-factly. “It’s a good thing you Grims are a hardy bunch.”

~/~/~/~/~

Tess never knew what he was, believe it or not; she suspected, perhaps, but she was an ordinary human woman who had one fatal flaw: she was so assured in her own observational skills that she missed what was directly in front of her face. Granted, he was better at hiding his true nature from the world than he had been even a few centuries before, but sometimes he wondered what it would have been like if she had ever discovered his secret.

He supposed no mating—marriage, humans called it marriage—would last when deceit was one of its cornerstones, and truthfully it wasn’t Tess’s infidelity that truly hurt.

No, that was all Daisy. He hadn’t known what true love was until he’d seen the newborn baby girl in Tess’s arms; but he did now, and now he was paying the price for it. Loyalty and guidance when won was part of a Grim’s makeup, just as any dog no matter its origins, and he had felt both for his daughter a hundredfold. Offspring. _Mine_. His own protectiveness had caught him off-guard, but of course he would do anything for her.

“I suppose I can’t ever accuse you of not having a heart, then.” Miller’s voice was quiet and apologetic in the silence of the car, and he glanced over at her in time to see her look away from him. 

He snorted, turning back to look out the window. “Don’t think anyone would believe you if you told ‘em, anyway.” He’d given up his daughter to protect her, because she was human and normal and she needed her mother more than a Grim-turned-human father, but the decision had quite literally broken his heart along the way. “You humans, you’re menaces, you get under the skin so easily.”

Miller was so quiet for so long that he didn’t think she was going to answer him, but she surprised him. “Forgive me, sir,” she said softly, “but I think it all depends on what you’re like to begin with.”

She could have become rightly furious and afraid when she realized that Fred had spent the night with a Grim looking after him. Quite literally, because the little boy had become restless without his mother and had spent several minutes crying until Hardy had, for the first time in years, shifted into dog form. He had done so with Daisy when she had been about the same age, when children were still small enough not to be frightened of the supernatural, and Fred was no different. He’d dug his fingers into the Grim’s fur and babbled with curiosity until finally he had been lulled to sleep by his own exhaustion, and Hardy had slept curled around him protectively, wishing that there had been someone to protect Danny Latimer, and Pippa and Lisa, and all of those thousands of other children who were killed or hurt. But Miller had taken it in stride and still trusted him with her son, and he never told her how much that helped him survive each day. 

Daisy had surprised him, though. He had gone to Sandbrook with Miller to try and get the case reopened and to have the very rare dinner with his daughter and ex-wife and received the shock of his life when she had asked him for a moment alone. 

“You’ve lied to me, Dad,” In the lighting she looked suddenly older than fifteen, harsher and stonier, “both you and Mum. I’m asking for the truth now—it was Mum who lost the evidence for the Sandbrook case, wasn’t it?”

“Daisy—where did you hear that?” He was so taken aback by her question he floundered for a long moment, and it was all the answer she needed. 

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “I’m the daughter of two coppers, you think I can’t look between the bloody lines of an _interview_? There were only so many DS’s working the Sandbrook case, and _your_ DS _was Mum_.”

The bloody Echo interview. He’d forgotten it in the consequent months following the close of the Latimer case, and Joe’s subsequent plea of not guilty, and he had never dreamed his daughter would have even wanted to look at the article anyway. “Bloody—darlin’, this isn’t- I can’t—how did you even know about that anyway?”

Daisy shifted from foot to foot, suddenly sheepish. “I— look, I can’t say I haven’t missed you, because I have. You’re my _dad_ , and you haven’t _been here_ , and I was so angry when you left but then it just seemed strange… like, Mum came home with a guy barely a month after you left, and here you were leaving voicemails for me every week saying you missed me. So, I… set up an alert of Broadchurch and your name, and a few months ago this interview popped up on the newsfeed saying you finally admitted it wasn’t you who lost the pendant!”

The swelling of pride he felt at her deductions should have surprised him more, but he really wasn’t. He was truly more ashamed at the relief he felt knowing that she had figured it out for herself, so that he could absolve himself of the responsibility of keeping it secret anymore. “Have you—told your mother you’ve figured it out, darlin’?”

Her eyes welled with tears that she couldn’t quite hold back, and a few spilled over her cheeks. Aching to see her hurting so much, Hardy stepped up to her and drew her close, wiping her tears and holding her as she frantically shook her head. “I’m not—I wasn’t going to say anything to her until I asked _you_ first. That’s why I agreed to this dinner to begin with, so I could see you in person and not have to worry about you lying to me.”

Hardy tugged her closer, rubbing her back. “Devious,” he said thickly, trying to fight back tears of his own. 

“Soppy,” she mumbled into his shirt, her arms wrapped around him. “I don’t—Dad, I don’t know how I can look at Mum now, knowing what I do. Can I… could I come with you back to that town you’re in?”

Hardy was a selfish enough man to be tempted to immediately tell her yes, wanting nothing more than to spend time with his daughter, but then common sense prevailed. “No, Daisy. Not yet.”

“But--!”

He stepped back from her, holding her at arm’s length to look her in the eye. “Daiz, I would love nothing more than to have you come to Broadchurch with me, really and truly, and if I could I would take you with me tonight. But right now I’m in the middle of closing a case, and we have suspects who are in Broadchurch I don’t want you anywhere near.”

Again, Daisy proved to be the daughter of two coppers by reading between the lines. “Are you going to be safe there, Dad?”

“I most definitely will be,” he assured her with grim amusement. Who in their right mind would attack a Grim, after all? “I promise that as soon as we close the case and it’s over then I’ll come back here and see you, and if it’s still what you want then your mum and I can discuss shared custody and you can come live with me wherever you want.” He cupped her face in his hands, holding her gaze. “My highest priority is your safety—it always has been—and right now the safest place you can be is with your mum. Can you do that for me, darlin’?”

It hadn’t been easy, but eventually Daisy agreed, and it took quite a while before she brought up what she had found out again. Over two years, in fact, and well after the time that he and Miller solved Sandbrook and he had moved back closer to her, and his broken heart started to mend itself with her acceptance. 

“You lied to me! All this time you’ve kept it from me, and let me think—”

“—cared about you, Daisy, we didn’t want—”

Hardy paused as he let the door shut softly behind him. He hadn’t heard his ex-wife and daughter in such a fierce row in years, and he wasn’t that good of a man to not be curious about what they were discussing. He knew what it was they were discussing.

“ _You_ didn’t want to risk it, because _you_ were the one—”

“Your father—”

“Dad’s the fallback blame, isn’t he? He’s _always_ the one to blame! For years now I’ve heard you put him down, I’ve let you let me hate him, and for something you did!”

“I—Daisy, I couldn’t risk anyone—”

The house fell deathly silent; Hardy’s senses pricked automatically, half-convinced that some spell or curse had settled on them, but it was simply Daisy reining in her temper and going scarily quiet. “You’re never going to admit it, are you, Mum? Well, I’m not living the lie anymore—until you’re willing to admit to me why Dad took the blame, I’m not going to live here with you.”

Daisy came around the corner with her coat over her arm and a bulging bag wheeled behind her. She wasn’t surprised to see him at all and simply made her way through the front door without another word. 

“You son of a bitch, you _told her_ —!” 

Tess was in tears as she rounded the corner herself, her hair awry and her usually impeccable appearance decidedly unkempt. Spit literally flew from her mouth as she rushed forward to attack him, screaming profanities all the way, and Hardy’s dwindling patience snapped. Having already begun turning to follow his daughter outside, he spun around again and planted himself firmly in front of the door, facing her rage head on. “ _Don’t_ , Tess.” It came out more of a growl than he had wanted, than what was wise, and Tess stopped in her tracks, face rapidly paling at his show of true danger. “Just don’t. Let her go.”

“You told her!”

“I did no such thing, and if you’d get your head out of your sanctimonious _arse_ you’d realize that. She figured it out all on her own. Now give her space, or you’ll lose her for good.”

It was pitiful seeing her such, a frightened woman whose life was beginning to crumble around her. In more ways than one, he realized belatedly. She would have no way of sensing it, of course, being an ordinary human. But he had loved her with all the understanding he had of the word, and she was ultimately still Daisy’s mother. 

“You need to go and be checked over by a doctor,” he said bluntly, and it was such an abrupt non-sequitur that she could only gape at him for a long moment.

“I’m not going to a fucking _shrink_ , Alec—”

“Not a shrink,” he snapped. “God, were you always like this? Go to your gynecologist and get checked out for cancer.”

She went paler still. Throughout their marriage he had always had a sense for death, and he had been utterly unsurprised when her mother had died from a stroke almost five years ago now. In this she had no response except for a wordless nod because what else could she do?

Hardy left without another word, away from the woman he had been married to and the deathly pall that had begun to settle around her, a precursor to what he was hoping she could be saved from. Cancer was a horrible way to go, and he hoped she would listen to him.

Daisy was sitting with cross arms in the passenger seat of his car, still too angry to cry. As he started the car and began to drive them down the road, she looked over at him fiercely. “I hope _you_ don’t have any other secrets you’re keeping from me.”

Damn it. The question fully set him off, made the Grim howl and rage, and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to hold it back much longer. He needed to _run_. A wooded glen would have to do for now, and he parked the car with squealing brakes as he climbed out again. “Just this.”

He’d seriously underestimated her. Initial fear faded quickly realizing exactly what her father was; in the end Daisy took his hand and helped him rein in his anger and his own sense of fear, and allowed him to take her to Broadchurch.

He should have realized what she was sooner than he did. She was nearly an adult, she always seemed to inherently _know_ , and it was her blurting out that Miller was a Changeling without having to be told that alerted them both. 

His daughter was a bloody Seer.


	3. Daisy Hardy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, this is an update a long time coming, and this time it's for the simple fact that I now know more information about Ulysses S Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman during the American Civil War than I ever have before. I took a hard left into reading up on every book both fictional and nonfictional about them (but especially Sherman) that I could get my hands on, and I didn't write _anything_ for, like, two months straight. Fun fact about Sherman: you thought our boy Hardy hated journalists? Oh boy. Sherman was a high-strung hot mess of a man, and he hated journalists with a fiery passion-- to the point where he literally had one of them court-martialed and permanently banned from his camp, and was apparently infuriated that the indicted journalist _wasn't shot_ as punishment. He's also the one who famously said, "If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast." Dramatic much? 
> 
> Anyway, thank you for patiently waiting for this update as I finally get my shit together and finish this story. Next chapter is being worked on and should be up soon. In the meantime, read and please review!

She watched the dark shadow that was her father lope back to her, but Daisy felt no fear. Not truly. There had been the initial shock of it, but that had faded quickly at the _sense_ that it made, and she sat quietly until he came back, her hands held limply in her lap as he came closer. It was truly amazing that for being such a large creature the dog made so little noise, but it was hard to miss the shine of its eyes even amidst the nighttime shadows.

They were eyes she knew very well, even if they were in a form she wasn’t familiar with.

The noiseless footfalls of the Grim shifted noisily to the steps of a human, and then her father was standing in front of her with an expression she could only label as terrified.  
“Don’t tell me you never meant to keep that from me for so long,” she said sarcastically, because wasn’t that what parents _did_ when they were found out? Assure their children they were always meant to be brought in on the secret when they only reached the right age?

“I never meant for you to find out at all,” he said quietly, and she probably should have felt hurt at that answer but he was _honest_ about it. He shoved his hands deep in his coat-pockets. “Your mum doesn’t even know.”

Daisy sat in stony silence for a long moment, the wind in the trees the only discernible interruption as she sized him up. “So… were we just an experiment for you, then?” She tried to summon the same rancor with him as she had just done with Mum, but it wasn’t there this time. This time, she just felt tired. She was suddenly crying and she had no idea when she’d begun to, either.

Her dad kneeled in front of her, the knees of his pants immediately dirtied in the mud, but he didn’t care; cupping her face in his hands he wiped the tears from her cheeks, so soft and gentle and loving and _her dad_ that she sobbed all the more. He’d clearly lived all these years terrified of their rejection, but what did Daisy care if her dad was a Grim? “I just wanted you to be here, Dad! I just wanted us to be a _family_!”

“I know, Daiz,” Dad said, and the grief in his expression only compounded the truth of his statement. “I did, too.”

A dam broke inside her then, almost four years’ worth of grief and anger and fear pouring out without check, unable to be slowed or checked. She cried for almost an hour if the clock in the dash wasn’t off, mourning her family’s breaking apart, the years she spent hating the wrong person, maybe even crying for her dad, trying to come to terms with her mum’s actions and not quite able to do it. Through it all her dad stayed kneeling beside her, then gathered her up close in an embrace that made her feel _safe_ for the first time in years, stroking her hair and letting her ride out her storm of grief.

When she finally felt calmer, she pulled back in embarrassment and wiped her face with her shirtsleeve. Her dad reached into the car and came back with a half-crushed box of tissues which he offered her wordlessly. She managed a watery smile in thanks and blew her nose and finished wiping away her tears, and then she swung her legs into the car and closed the door behind her. 

Her dad walked around to the opposite side of the car and slid in, turning the key to start the engine. He smiled sadly over at her, gently brushing her hair back from her face. “Let’s go home, yeah?”

~/~/~/~/~

Home, Daisy found out shortly afterwards, was back in Broadchurch. It wasn’t an overnight move by any means—she hid herself in her dad’s small flat for several days, having become so distraught over her fighting with her mum that she was physically ill over it. Her dad kept his distance for the most part over this time, giving her the space she needed to come to terms with the way her life had once again turned upside down.

It wasn’t easy. She was pleased to have her dad back in her life, but she was still only a seventeen-year-old girl and her anger and sense of betrayal led her to do some rather questionable things. There was the night that she and mate James went on a joyride in a car he managed to hotwire, and she smoked weed for the first time. Her dad didn’t find out about the joyride, but he _did_ know about the smoking, and he wasn’t happy about it. She skipped school. She snuck drinks, and not the wine cooler varieties either. The worst instance, however, came when she gave herself alcohol poisoning by drinking too much whiskey.

She woke up to a hospital ceiling above her head and the steady beeping of a heart monitor ringing in her ears, and a very unkempt, _very_ worried father sitting beside her bed. That more than any tongue-lashing—and, oh, her dad was creative with those when pushed—was what truly made her feel guilty, made her tears well up and her throat ache with them. “What happened?” she whispered, and it hurt to talk.

And she was distinctly horrified to see her dad actually start crying himself, silently, but there was grief enough in his expression to stagger her. _What_ had she done? “Daisy Marie, you _are_ going to break my heart again if you keep this up.”

She flinched, those words worse than any other possible ones he could have possibly said because she _had_ broken her dad’s heart before, she _had_ almost killed him, and now she was well on her way to doing so again. “S-sorry,” she gasped out, squeezing her eyes shut so she wouldn’t see the pain she’d caused him. “I’m s-so sorry, Dad…”

He twined his fingers in hers, soft and gentle, and she was startled enough by it that she opened her eyes again. “You’re in a lot of trouble, darlin’,” he said thickly, “and so is the person who you got that whiskey from. You’re lucky I came home when I did.”

She hadn’t been lucky. Throughout all the drinking of the whiskey that had burned and seared at her throat she had _known_ that she would be alive the next morning, _known_ it in her bones that she would be found. She almost blurted this out to him but realized that such a blasé-sounding comment would be the tipping point for him going ballistic with fury, not knowing that her assurance wouldn’t simply be a teenager’s flippancy. “I’m _sorry_ ,” was all she found she could say again in response, because she couldn’t bear to see him crying anymore.

It was only a month after this that he announced they would be moving to Broadchurch. Truth be told, Daisy had suspected that the move was going to happen sooner or later—he had been looking for a new DI position, had interviewed at a select few; she was enough of a copper’s child to do a little snooping of her own to look through documents and emails and gather up evidence. There wasn’t much else she could do anyway, being grounded the way she was; her dad had not gone easy on her for her stint in the hospital, and she was grounded for at least two months before he finally relented after sitting them both down and having a discussion about the dangers of drinking. She’d put up with it because he was her dad and he was still worried and she loved him, but it was hard. 

Her dad being a Grim notwithstanding, there was still a tension on her end of their relationship, leftovers of a child’s mistrust of when things were going right, and she was unable to fully relax in fear of her life upheaving again. She didn’t trust her dad to always be there, both because it wasn’t truly in a Grim’s nature, but also because he had left once before. This was her current mentality when they finally did pick up and move, and it only grew worse as time went on. Her dad tried his best, but living with him all the time now made her realize just how woefully over his head he was as a parent. Fiercely protective and loyal as he was to her, he seemed unable to grasp what it meant to be a human being.

Ultimately it helped them both tremendously that he had finally told her what he was, because if he had kept that a secret as well throughout Trish Winterman’s case she probably would have up and left for her mother’s again. He tried his best to be there for Daisy, kept up with their lunches and dinners together in between her classes and his new? old? position as DI of Broadchurch; she learned more about Danny Latimer’s murder investigation than she had ever before, and she tried to imagine him walking along the looming cliffs of the town as his heart started to give up on him. It was a lonely, frightening thought, and it didn’t help the niggling seed of guilt that stayed with her. And then came the rape case, even though he didn’t tell her that was what it was (she already knew), and he was barely home at all. And then came the night she discovered some photos she had meant to keep completely secret had been spread to others in her school, and she had to face the stares and the whispers, the labels of ‘slut’, and ‘whore’, and she wanted to run.

In that instance, it was Chloe Latimer who ultimately helped her the most. Daisy had sent her dad out on a run as the Grim, realizing now how he itched being human for so long, but she also needed some time to regroup and think. The quiet knock on her door should have been surprising but it wasn’t, and she wasn’t altogether taken aback to find it was Chloe either.

“What they did, going through your phone, that wasn’t right,” Chloe said as they sat together on the sofa. “Bet you anything there’s plenty of girls in that school who have similar pictures.”

“But that doesn’t change the fact that they’ve all seen mine.” Daisy was tempted to hide her face in her knees as her face flamed, but maybe that would be too childish. “I didn’t mean anything by them, God, that’s what makes it so embarrassing!” Couldn’t girls be allowed to take pictures of themselves, nude or otherwise, and not have to worry about someone else stealing them? 

“What have you done with them? The photos?”

Daisy swallowed. “Still have them. When my dad finds out, he’ll want them kept in case I decide to press charges.”

And that was the one person she didn’t ever want to tell—her dad had done so much to try and protect her, to give her a second chance, and she’d blown, hadn’t she? Her sense of shame only mingled with the lingering resentment she felt for her dad’s habits of choosing the job over everything else, and she started to toy with the idea of going back to her mum’s. In hindsight she would realize how thoughtlessly she had reasoned with a teenager’s intuition, and just how badly she had hurt her dad over again.

He was going to leave her again. She didn’t know how to explain it, didn’t even really know how she knew it, but late at night between wakefulness and dreams she realized: he was going to leave her behind, maybe soon. Her dad would only protest and make promises he wouldn’t keep if she tried to tell him this, and only said it was because of the photos that she was going back to Sandbrook. She tried her hardest to ignore the way he desperately tried to convince her to stay, but of course that was perhaps the biggest error (or blessing in disguise) that she made, because she didn’t take Ellie Miller into account with her actions.

“Daisy, I’d like to speak to you.”

She looked up from her phone to find her dad’s partner standing above her, still in her suit from work and stress written into the lines of her face. The Winterman case was dragging on, and from the looks of it wasn’t going to be solved in the next day or two; Daisy almost ignored her, but self-preservation stopped her at the last minute. She set her phone aside instead and looked up at her company warily. “If it’s about me or my dad, you don’t have to. There’s nothing to talk about.” _Not with you, anyway_. She didn’t know Ellie Miller, not really, and she was still puzzling about the latter’s relationship with her dad. The rumor that her dad had had an affair with Ellie was laughable seen from Daisy’s side of things, but still. There was something between them that she couldn’t put a finger on, and it bothered her. 

It would be another realization in hindsight that it was jealousy on her part that made her uneasy, jealousy of anything that could pull her dad’s attention from Daisy.

Ellie drew a lot of that attention when it wasn’t his job.

“It _is_ my business when my boss isn’t able to focus completely on an investigation,” Ellie said quietly, shoving her hands in her pockets. “And your dad’s been more mopey than normal the last few days worrying about you.”

“So it’s my fault that my dad can’t do his job?” Daisy snapped, stung and suddenly furious that this stranger would dare intrude. “Thanks for your concern, but it’s _none_ of your business!” She stood from her seat, noting idly that she was as tall as Ellie was. She was a small woman, soft-looking and almost homely, and Daisy wondered what it was that made her dad like her. 

“Your dad loves you, Daisy, more than you’ll probably know. He doesn’t want to see you hurting, and frankly I don’t like seeing either of you this miserable. Do you realize the amount of trust your dad has placed in you recently, bringing you here, telling you about himself?”

_She knew_. Daisy gaped at her, unable to believe what she had just heard. Ellie _knew_ about her dad being a Grim, which meant that he had to have told her—the secret that he hadn’t even told Daisy’s mother, despite fourteen years of marriage. Shock swiftly turned to rage. “I don’t know who you think you are,” she snarled, bristling very much like her father did when _he_ was angered, “but I don’t need some—some fucking _Changeling_ telling me about secrets when you keep yours under lock and key!”

Stunned silence fell, so quickly and suddenly the breath caught in Daisy’s throat—and then a flare of true danger tingled down her spine when she met Ellie’s eyes. “ _What did you just say_?” There was something flat and disbelieving to Ellie’s eyes, a flicker of gold that made Daisy’s stomach flip, and a barely perceptible growl there to the question that made her do a double take.

Then she realized what she had said, and she paled. “I don’t- I- I didn’t—”

But Ellie was already spinning away from her. “That absolute bastard, what was he _thinking_ telling you about me? Talking about himself is one thing, but—”

“He didn’t tell me!” The exclamation drew Ellie’s attention, made her pause and then slowly turn back to face her, and _there_ it was. The dragon. Daisy flushed in mortification under that stare, and she shrank back. “I don’t know what made me say that,” she whispered. “But it’s true, isn’t it? You’re a Changeling.”

“That wasn’t just a lucky guess.” Now Ellie was looking her up and down with an appraising gaze, one far too much like her dad’s, and Daisy shifted uncomfortably. “Who told you?”

“No one did! I already told you, I don’t know why I said that, it was just a lucky guess!”

“No,” Ellie said slowly, and she pulled her phone out, “I think it might have been more than that.” Two rings of the phone and she spoke. “Yeah, Hardy? I need you to come home now. No, there isn’t an emergency, but--… the paperwork can wait until tomorrow, you knob, but there’s something your daughter needs to tell you!” She rolled her eyes at whatever snarky reply he responded with, and then bared her teeth in a smile. “ _Thank you_ , sir. We’ll be waiting.”

Despite herself, Daisy giggled as Ellie ended the call. “I’m sorry, I just—my dad hates perky people, and that response was brilliant.”

“Oh, I know,” Ellie said with a sharp little grin. “That’s why I do it.”

~/~/~/~/~

When her dad came home less than fifteen minutes later, it was to the both of them sitting on the sofa. He looked between them warily, clearly unable to understand what it was that was so serious. “Miller? Daize, what’s going on?”

“Just to be clear, sir,” Ellie said quietly, “you never told Daisy that I’m a Changeling, yeah?”

He looked so dumbfounded that the question was answered before he spoke. “What? No, why would I?”

“Because I said she was,” Daisy said in a small voice, not quite able to look him in the eye. “She— Mrs. Miller came to talk to me and… and I fought with her, and I called her a Changeling.” She knocked her knees together nervously, sitting on her hands. “But I didn’t know that she was one until I said it.”

It was clear that Ellie had had some inkling of understanding what she was when she called Daisy’s dad home, but it was him who actually put the pieces together. For the first time in a long time he looked completely floored. “Oh, _fuck_ ,” he breathed, looking at her with wide eyes. “A Seer?”

Ellie frowned. “Well, that’s a bit premature to say it like it’s final, sir. You need more evidence before you claim something like that.” She made a face. “But yes. That’s what I thought.”

“Damn.” He turned to Daisy again, walking closer to the couch until she stood. Wordlessly she hugged him, burying her face in his jacket and wanting everything to go away. “It’s alright, darlin’, it’s okay…”

She felt like her whole world was turning upside down again, and she hated it. “But I don’t want this,” she sobbed, and when did she even start crying? What did being a Seer even _mean_ in this day and age? The old days of magic and creatures were so far gone that very little of them still existed in ordinary life and they had become the stuff of fairy tales. Her friend Mona in Sandbrook had an older sister who was a witch, but a witch’s or wizard’s powers were curtailed, carefully controlled until they were a laughingstock, and Mona’s sister was no different. “I don’t want this, I can’t—what if they take me, Dad?”

His fingers threaded through her hair as he gripped her to him even tighter. “I’d like to see them try,” he growled, and maybe others would have been intimidated by him, but Daisy felt warmed despite her fears. It wasn’t illegal to be of some sort of magical stock, but children and teenagers were carefully monitored and trained by government officials if they were found to harness any sort of abilities, claiming them as their own. 

Clearly Ellie was having the same sort of thoughts as Daisy, because she spoke up from the sofa. “Don’t suppose there’s any way of getting past a Grim, is there, Hardy? Anybody ever try?”

Her dad stilled at the question. “Once or twice, yeah, people’ll have tried. Didn’t get very far.”

“No, I thought not.”

Yeah, she really shouldn’t have felt better with the implications that conveyed. But she was.

~/~/~/~/~

“So you’re actually trusting me with this?” Chloe’s voice was a mix of disbelieving and warm. She and Daisy were sitting in one of the small cafes on Broadchurch’s main street after school, drinking hot chocolate together as they looked over their homework. “I didn’t think you would, we have only just become friends, after all.”

“I trust you,” Daisy said simply, because it was the truth. 

“You know people were trying to figure out where you’d gone the past four months, it actually got pretty ridiculous.” Chloe rolled her eyes and shook her head, sipping her drink. “I’m glad you came back, though. I’m glad you decided to stay with your dad.”

“Yeah. I am, too.”

The fallout from their discovery of Daisy’s abilities wasn’t as bad as she had first fearfully believed it would be. It had been hard, yes, knowing that there was a name to all of the little moments that she had always somehow known—or Known, rather—something that she had had no business knowing. But that had been oddly freeing as well in time, when she had actually sat down and looked into the history of Seers throughout the last few thousand years, and talked to her dad about the few Seers he had come across himself.

“I don’t think I am _ever_ going to be able to tease you about your age again,” she had said during one of those talks, and he had outright laughed. And that was true—it was truly amazing to think that she was sitting with a being literally a thousand years old, someone who had seen the beginning of England’s civilization, and more than likely would probably see its end. 

“Where did you go, then?”

Chloe’s quiet question brought Daisy back to the now. “My dad knows a wizard,” she whispered with a smile, leaning in close. “One of the _real_ ones, the ones who’ve hidden from our ordinary world. Apparently, he’d known one of this wizard’s ancestors centuries back and he still stays in contact with the family. They knew of a Seer in the community who was able to instruct me on how to manage my Knowing things.”

Chloe’s eyebrows had risen nearly up to her hairline at the explanation. “Wicked. I’ve got to admit, I’m jealous. Not the Knowing things, I mean, just the idea you got to see such a big secret society. I’m still struggling to wrap my head around the fact that my mum is a selkie, and I’ve known about that since... well, Danny's death.” She laughed in a strained, uncomfortable way. “Suppose you’re having the same difficulty with your dad, then, knowing he’s a Grim?”

That had been the one thing that both girls had been careful to discuss with their respective parents. This had led to a rather tense but surprisingly easy conversation in which Daisy’s dad and Chloe’s mum had found out about each other’s alter egos, but it had helped the girls with their friendship knowing the respective secrets their parents held. 

Daisy nodded. “Yeah. But it’s helped a lot, too, knowing that I’ve got someone who realizes what it’s like to be a bit different, you know?” She finished her drink and was silent for another long moment before finally daring to voice the question she’d been wanting to ask. “Any luck yet, then? With finding your mum’s Skin? Dad won’t breathe a word about it, and I still haven’t honed my ability enough to See whether you do.”

Chloe took a deep breath, shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “Nothing yet.” The sadness in her eyes was enough to make Daisy’s own heart hurt.

“You will,” she said anyway, because even though she didn’t Know whether Chloe would or not, she could always Hope.


	4. Chloe Latimer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for attempted rape. Nothing goes very far with it, just putting it out there.

“Any luck then? With finding your mum’s Skin?”

The usual mix of frustration and sadness tightened Chloe’s throat as she looked at Daisy and shook her head. It had been a long three months, and so far she hadn’t had much luck in her search, even with a Grim’s and a Changeling’s help. “No. Nothing yet.” From the way Daisy’s mouth twisted, it was clear she sympathized even if she hadn’t been here for a while. 

“You will.”

It was said with absolute confidence, even if Daisy didn’t Know for sure, and Chloe appreciated it. Hell, she appreciated any of her friends right now, having become few and in between since Danny’s murder, but the former had become perhaps her closest. “Thank you. It helps, you know. Having you back here. My other friends… well, I can’t really talk to them about this, can I, not without my family becoming more of a freak show than we already are.”

“Dad says the majority of ordinary people have forgotten the fairytales were true, once. They know that magic still exists in some form, but they’ve written out the whole truth from their knowledge.”

Chloe thought that over for a long moment before she nodded her head. That made sense. It was something similar to what Hardy had told her himself a few months back, before she had enlisted his help. ' _People are idiots. They see what they want to see, and ostracize the irregular_ '. “Suppose he’s right,” she said. “You and your dad want to come over to mine for dinner tonight? Mum’s baking fish.” She was pleased she could even ask that nowadays having been badly ostracized in the days following Danny’s murder, but she had a feeling that Daisy would become a lifelong friend. 

At this point, Chloe had been through too much with both her and her father for it to be any different.

~/~/~/~/~

“So what have I done to make me not good enough, you bloody bastard? You’ve kept me here all these years, I gave you children, we were a family, and now you decide to leave me for a blonde _bitch_?”

“It wasn’t about that, Beth—”

“It _is_ about that, you fuckwit! Three children! Fifteen _fuckin_ ’ years!”

Her parents’ voices were raised far too loudly for this time of night; braced against the doorframe of her bedroom, Chloe had a passing thought that they could wake Danny up if they weren’t careful, and then stifled a sob with her fist. Danny wouldn’t ever wake up from their parents’ fighting because Danny was _dead_. And at first she had thought her mum and dad were fighting because of that, but in a way, this fight was her fault, wasn’t it? She’d gotten her dad out of a potential murder charge by making Becca Fisher confess to the police of her affair with Mark Latimer, but now her mum had found out, and things were spiraling farther and farther out of control. Chloe’s entire world was falling apart, and all she wanted was to talk to Danny about it.

‘ _So Dad’s had an affair, but of course you already knew that. But I’d rather have Mum and Dad divorced because of it if only that meant you were still alive, Danny_.’

It was the thing that was the most stifling to her in these new, horrible days—the fact that Chloe was often overlooked. The well-wishers and the apologetic ones often went to her parents first when they wanted to say how sorry they were that Danny was gone and approached Chloe only as an afterthought… or sometimes not at all. And her mum and dad—they tried, of course they did, they tried to be there for Chloe and her grief, but they were struggling to stay afloat amidst their own and she felt almost guilty for taking any of their time. 

So here she was, trying desperately to hold back her tears against the rushing tide of grief, and then her dad’s soft murmur responded to her mum’s anger, and her mum’s voice rose.

“…give me my Skin back, then! Let me go if you don’t want…”

“You can’t leave, Beth, not now…”

Her mum’s voice again, low and hurt, and Chloe strained to hear, to make sense of what she’d just overheard. “If you think I’d leave our daughter after losing our son just because I had my Skin back, you’re less a man than I thought, Mark.”

Chloe scrambled to her feet, hearing the sound of her mum’s footsteps coming closer to the door, standing in the middle of the hallway. When her mum swung the door open to leave, both of their faces fell seeing Chloe looking back at them. Her dad actually paled. “What did you mean,” she asked quietly, “by Skin?” 

The full story came out that night, in the dim lighting of her parents’ room and Danny’s open bedroom door gazing back at them; her mum was a Selkie, kept from the sea for sixteen years. As revelations went, it wasn’t the most traumatic; no, that traumatic moment came when DI Hardy showed up one afternoon to tell them Joe Miller murdered Danny. But that day was still months away, and Chloe was too numb now to respond in any particular way to the news of her mum’s supernatural origins. She would have likely been impressed by the revelation if it had been said any other time, but in this moment all she could do was ruminate about it silently and come back to it when things settled down.

Her parents’ marriage became a serious fear for her, seeing the closed doors, the tension, sensing the outright hatred as more and more of her dad’s lies found their way into the light. As the trial against Joe dragged on and it became clearer that the prosecution wouldn’t come through for the Latimer family her dad seemed to stay home less and less. They tried to keep it as quiet as possible, but Chloe always knew, and she hated the fact that she couldn’t help. 

And then Joe Miller walked free, and her parents’ marriage fell apart. It didn’t happen all at once, but one evening Chloe came home to find her dad’s belongings missing and her mum standing slightly guilty in the kitchen.

“I told him to get out. He… your dad’s not _with us_ , Chlo, he’s not letting the lost conviction go. I- I can’t raise you girls in that sort of mentality. I _won’t_ allow it.” There was a strain, an age, to her mum’s face that made Chloe sit at the kitchen table with a sad realization.

“He won’t tell you where he hid your Skin, will he?”

It was an old topic now, her mum being a Selkie, but it popped up with surprising normalcy in their conversations together. It was fascinating for Chloe to learn about this hidden world of the supernatural and magical, and her mum had endless tales about how almost every true creature could form some sort of human aspect, a way to blend into ordinary human society. It was a sore spot, too, one that Chloe frequently saw her mum wrestle within her wistful yearning of the sea, her love of the salty air.

Her mum looked at her for a long moment, her mouth pressed in a long thin line, and then she blurted out, “No. He hasn’t, yet. He likely never will.”

A Selkie’s life was mortal if left in their human form, and Chloe knew the resentment that her mum felt for the knowledge she would likely die after a very normal human lifespan. She had been toying with the idea of trying to locate her mum’s skin herself occasionally throughout the years, but she had no way of knowing where to start looking, or even if it was possible.

She probably wouldn’t have ever managed to if it hadn’t been for DI Hardy.

~/~/~/~/~

It was shortly after the Winterman case closed, and Daisy was gone to visit family friends—or so she’d said—that Chloe found herself walking home alone late one night from the cliffs. It was a habit she’d found herself falling into lately, feeling too stifled in the town and wanting some distance from everything. More often than not she felt her mum’s eyes watching her worryingly as she left, but so far she hadn’t said anything, and Chloe appreciated that more than she could ever say.

But this night, she was coming to regret heading out at all. 

She was being followed.

She didn’t know by whom, or maybe even by what, but she was too familiar with the sensation of being watched now to miss it, and she’d been watched for about fifteen minutes. She tried to ignore her suddenly racing heart and started to look furtively around for anything she could use as a potential weapon. Finding nothing but some thin branches, she hurried up her step hoping if she reached the first buildings of the town she’d be safe. She hadn’t even gone ten paces before her tail made their move.

The sound of rushing feet through the overgrown grass told her they were much closer to her than she’d originally thought, and she began to run, terror closing her throat. She was small, though, and her legs weren’t very long, either, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to outrun them for long. She could only hope to be close enough to the nearest building to scream for help when something tripped her up. The breath was knocked out of her lungs all at once and her limbs went temporarily dead on her. Rough hands grabbed her, tearing at her jacket and jeans, pulling her back through the grass towards her attacker—a man, rough-spoken and reeking of dirt and spirits. “C’mere, girlie.”  
She screamed and tried to kick him away, raising a hand to smash him across the face with her fist. He was too quick and wise for that, and caught it before she could swing, pinning her legs down under his bulk. “Now, now, none of that,” he giggled, and his accent sounded—Irish? “Be a good girlie for me, eh? Just want a bit of fu—”

The temperature seemed to drop, and Chloe’s body seized up with a newer fear as, suddenly, the air reverberated with a deep growling, a dog’s snarl of warning before her attacker was bowled over by a dark shadow. The man shrieked with pain and fear over the dog’s vicious barking and snapping teeth, and as Chloe watched the dog’s mouth tore into his arm, tearing sinew and cracking bone even through his clothes, its sharp nails digging into his chest. At first she was sure the man was going to end up dead, but the dog gave a sharp shake of its head and flung the man away, hackles raised in another growl as it advanced on the man again warningly.

“I got it, I got it!” the man shrieked, raising his one good arm up, the whites of his eyes noticeable even in the darkness. “Me mates and me w-won’t bother none of the humans here no more! W-won’t see me here n-no more!”

And just like that, he was gone—simply vanished into thin air with a faint clapping sound. Chloe was too frightened and disbelieving to do anything but stare at the spot where he had been in open-mouthed shock, feeling like she was going to be sick. 

She’d somehow forgotten about the dog until it whined at her, nosing at her curiously, and she shrieked in both surprise and fear and lashed out without thinking. She slapped its snout, hard enough it gave a little yip of startlement and jumped back, and Chloe froze up again, sure that it was going to become angry again and attack her. It wasn’t a normal dog, after all, even she could see that. 

The dog didn’t become angry, though, despite Chloe’s fear—with another low whine it nosed at her again, almost sounding like it was apologizing; then its teeth gently grasped her sleeve and tugged, pulling her into a sitting position. 

“What are you—? Oh.” Trembling and only just beginning to process what had nearly happened, she slowly finished pushing herself up and struggled to keep from bursting into tears. Her jacket was torn and her jeans had ridden down painfully from when the man had dragged her, but the dog wasn’t going to allow her the luxury of a freak-out. Growling a gentle rumble in its throat, it circled around her and braced her back up, shoving her, urging her to her feet. It remained patient enough as she steadied her breathing and focused on the now rather than the then, and the fact that despite her fear the dog had the capability of violence but had instead saved her. Protected her. “Thank you,” she whispered to it, and the dog did that odd rumble in its throat again and wagged its tail a couple times in answer. It circled around her again and allowed her to brace herself against it to stand; her fingers pulled at its matted fur and it snapped its teeth once at the irritation that caused, but otherwise it did nothing.

Her palms were streaked with dirt; leaves were caught in her hair. As she felt around on her person to make sure nothing else was wrong or out of place the dog sat on the ground, thumped its tail a few more times on the ground, and whined up at her.

“Not every day you’re saved by a Grim, eh?” she asked it quietly, and it barked. Blood still stained its teeth and nails, but she was less scared of it now than she had been. “I’ve heard a dog wandering around here for the last few months, you know, but I wouldn’t have guessed it would’ve been one like you.” Thinking back, she frowned. “Heard you during Joe bloody Miller’s trial, too, and… Danny’s murder investigation.” Suddenly suspicious, angry, she drew back from it. “If _you’re_ Joe bloody fuckin’ Miller—”

The dog growled in response, low and—angry? Then it stood again and walked a few paces away from her, towards the town. Then it turned to look back at her when she didn’t follow and in a very human way jerked its head in the direction it was going. Feeling suddenly very like a child being told off by a parent, Chloe swallowed hard and started to follow it. ‘It protected me,’ she reminded herself sternly. ‘I don’t think Joe bloody Miller would have the balls to do that.’ And of course it was silly to assume that this Grim would be him at all—after all, Joe had lived in Broadchurch for nearly twenty years and there had never been news or complaints of a dog out wandering until shortly after Danny’s murder. Broadchurch had a semi-strict rule about pets being only allowed out on a leash, but as far as Chloe knew although complaints with the police had been lodged about this supposed dog out wandering at night, nothing had ever been done about actually finding it.

Which would make sense, if the dog on the loose happened to be a supernatural entity on the police force itself. Stranger things had happened after all, or so her mum’s stories said. “So,” she said aloud, thinking as she went, and she noticed the dog’s gate slow as it trotted in front of her, “a Grim who’s only been here on and off for the last four years, appeared only after or maybe right at the time of Dan’s death, and after having no sign of it for two years after that, suddenly pops up again recently after our old DI and his daughter showed up again.” It was a fantastical guess, one she didn’t quite believe—it was too far-fetched, wasn’t it?—but she was taken aback when the dog circled back around her again, and before she’d finished twisting on her foot to follow it’s movements the dog had disappeared into the form of a very familiar man.

“Not Joe bloody fuckin’ Miller, no,” DI Hardy said with an amused half-grin. 

Chloe’s mouth dropped open, and she buried her face in her hands as her face flushed with embarrassment. “Oh my god, I was half-joking, I didn’t even mean it! Fuckin’ hell.” When finally she’d managed to stop her face from flaming, she looked back up. “Kept this under wraps, then. How did Joe’s defense never find out about you being a Grim?”

“Never gave them a reason to doubt I’m fully human,” Hardy responded quietly. “But seeing as you quite astutely came to the conclusion yourself, there’s no reason to hide it.”

“What attacked me? Was he human?” She hugged her arms closely around herself, shivering slightly again as she asked. “The way he disappeared—”

“A pooka. They can be good, helpful even, but a majority of them prefer to cause chaos and misfortune. He happened to be the latter.”

“You didn’t kill him.”

“Should I have?” He sounded genuinely baffled.

“Well… that’s part of the Grim legend, isn’t it? That you’re harbingers of death?” Realizing that she was asking potentially offensive questions, Chloe flushed again and shuffled where she stood. “Sorry. Bit rude, I suppose.”

Hardy, thank god, still looked more amused than upset; one eyebrow quirked upwards hearing her apology, and she could have sworn he grinned a little. “Haven’t heard the ‘harbingers of death’ for a century or two—but, yes, I suppose we are, and it’s justified.” He was quiet for a long moment, before finally continuing. “Can’t say it was easy letting him go—if I hadn’t made Broadchurch my home, I probably would have killed him and been with it. A dead pooka won’t be able to spread the word that the town’s being traveled by a Grim, though.”

Chloe’s spine shuddered at the knowledge of what he’d saved her from. “Thank you,” she said again.

He clearly didn’t have the same ease in human form as he had otherwise, because this time he merely nodded and then turned back to the path. “C’mon. Let’s get you home.”

Guilt made Chloe fight with herself for a long moment as they headed off again, still slightly afraid of the Grim and what it stood for, but also calmer knowing who it was. “You can… change back, you know. To your Grim form. You were obviously out running before you came to help me, it can’t be too often you get to do that now.”

It was telling that he didn’t try to deflect her suggestion; it didn’t take long at all before he did just that and melted into the shadows again as a black dog, trotting a few paces in front of her. In the dim haze of the streetlights as they reached the town it was easier to mistake him as a regular dog—except for the Grim’s unnatural size and gleaming amber eyes. He never went too far ahead of her, and once or twice circled around to brush up against her leg to check that she was still okay. 

Her mum was waiting for her. “Chloe! I’ve been trying to call you, you’re never this late—! What happened?” She hurried down from the door and gently grabbed hold of Chloe’s jacket, looking at her disheveled state, dirty clothes, and the bruise that was starting to form on her wrist from where the pooka had grabbed it, and her eyes widened. “My god, what happened to you? Are you alright?”

Suddenly Chloe was shivering again, and this time she couldn’t stop it. She pulled her mum in for a hug and swallowed down her tears. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I wouldn’t have been, though. A- a pooka—you know what that is, right?—” Her mum nodded, her face suddenly paling, “he came after me while I was heading back and he- he—” She stumbled over the words, unable to say them, but she didn’t need to. 

Her mum looked suddenly dangerous. “Where is it?” she growled, looking out into the darkness. “I’ll drown it in the ocean if I have to and scatter the body parts along the coast—” She cut herself off abruptly as her gaze landed on the dog standing on the edge of their property, poised and alert like Chloe had never truly seen her before. There was a fissure of danger in the air that made her realize that her mum and the Grim were having some sort of battle of wills, or maybe it was simply sizing each other up. It was the moment that she realized it could turn very ugly very quickly between two very supernatural creatures that abruptly her mum relaxed and she nodded at the dog instead of trying to attack it. “Thank you for bringing her home,” she said softly, stiffly, and the Grim—Hardy, Chloe reminded herself sternly, it was probably rude to refer to him as an ‘it’—made that low rumbling growl in answer before turning and melting into the shadows. Literally, Chloe realized belatedly, as if he’d never been there in the first place, and her spine shuddered again with the impossible reality.

It took Chloe another week of her mum’s fretting over what had happened and trying to hide that she was fretting before she could break away from the house. In the two hours that her mum would be gone for a client meeting, she took the main road across town and to the police station where she called for DI Hardy at the front desk. When he came down, looking bemused and unkempt as always, she asked him to join her on a walk. 

“I promise it won’t take more than a few minutes, but there was something I needed to ask you. Please?”

He followed her willingly enough, holding the door for her so they could step outside for their walk. The idea Chloe was preparing to ask him about had been bouncing around in her head since the night he’d shown himself as a Grim, but she wasn’t sure if it would be something he would go along with. 

Maybe it would give him something to do with Daisy gone for the next couple of months.

“Mum’s told me creatures of magical or supernatural origins can sense each other,” she began without preamble when they were in a secluded area, “and that’s why you were able to come help me. You sensed the pooka.” He nodded, but he remained silent, letting her do the majority of the talking. “Could you… is it possible for you to do that for a selkie’s Skin?”

~/~/~/~/~

To say that Hardy wasn’t hard to convince was an understatement, really—after explaining whose Skin it was Chloe was trying to locate, and why, he only asked that Ellie be allowed in on the search as well. And there they were almost five months later with very little to go on, and of course Chloe’s dad had left Dorset behind and no one knew where he had gone. Chloe had tried to be less resentful of his actions, especially the fact he tried to kill himself when he still had a family, but it was hard. Having Daisy back helped a lot; it felt like having an ally. 

It fell to Ellie to find the first clue of where to find the Skin. The four of them—Hardy and Daisy, Ellie, and Chloe—were all gathered in various areas of the Hardy’s house perusing their gathered information on Mark Latimer’s various haunts when Ellie let out a little yelp. “Found it! Bloody _finally_!” With a wide, fierce smile, she strode up to the table between the Hardy’s and slapped the map down, her finger tapping at a far edge of the paper. “We’ve all been thinking of where he could have hidden Beth’s Skin _recently_ , right? You don’t leave something like that in one place for too long, after all, or so we thought. But what if he’s never moved it?”

Sitting up straight in his chair, Hardy looked over her arm to the area she was currently indicating. “Not very smart of him, but possible. Probably thought people _would_ assume he’d move it often and that it would be easier to leave it in one place if anyone found out.”

Ellie nodded. “Right. So I triangulated all of the data we’ve gathered and found out that when he was approximately eighteen years old, and Chloe was just born, he took a trip to the other side of the town. He was gone for about six hours and then came back like nothing had happened. Then, four years later, he made the exact same trip and was gone for about the same amount of time.”

“Okay,” Daisy said slowly, also looking curiously at the map, “so where was he going?”

Chloe gasped, having already read the address Ellie had written down. “That’s my Gran’s old address, before she moved to Wales!”

Hardy frowned. “He might have hidden it with her then, but why wouldn’t she have taken it with her to Wales, too? We won’t have the ability to request a search warrant there.”

“Ah, but that’s where we’re in luck, sir,” Ellie said with another smile. With her other hand she shoved her notebook closer to him. “Look at the dates. _Specifically_ , his last trip out there.”

Whatever it was that she was showing him, it was clearly in their favor, because a very similar look crossed his face. “Oh that is _brilliant_ , Miller!”

“Isn’t it just?” Noticing both Chloe’s and Daisy’s blank looks, Ellie’s smile softened. “His last trip out there was a year _after_ his mum sold her property and moved. Tracing the bank accounts, he was the one who bought it.”

Daisy’s expression cleared. “So why did he feel the need to buy a property that he’s never been back to?” she breathed, clearly excited.

“Do you need a search warrant for that, then?” Chloe asked both of the detectives, desperate to find out if Ellie was right. “When can you go?”

Surprisingly, it was Hardy who responded first. “You didn’t ask for our help just because we’re detectives, Chloe. Don’t suppose humans can do much against a random animal sniffing around, can they, Miller?”

“No, I don’t suppose they can.”

~/~/~/~/~

Chloe waited until Lizzie had gone to bed for the night before she pulled out her gift, setting it on the kitchen table for when her mum came back downstairs. Her heart was pounding with a mix of both excitement and dread as she waited. The fairytales, after all, all said that a Selkie who discovered their skin would immediately abandon their human family and never look back. She had no wish to lose her mum after having lost so much over the years.

“Mum, I have something to give you.”

Her mum stopped in the doorway of the living room, a basket of folded laundry at her hip as she paused. “I appreciate the thought, Chlo, but Christmas is still a few months away. Can I take a look at it after I finish putting these away?”

“This is better than Christmas, Mum. Just- come and have a look, yeah? I promise you’re going to love it.” Despite her best efforts, her voice cracked with the last word, and that more than anything piqued her mum’s curiosity and concern.

“Alright, sweetheart. Are you sure you’re alright, you’re looking peaky— _oh_. Oh my God. _What_ —?” The basket tumbled to the ground, spilling clothes everywhere, but her mum’s attention was nowhere but on the sight of the old leather briefcase. The case sat open, smelling of dirt and age, and its sides had become weathered, but its contents had been unspoiled and utterly untouched by the years. Hardy had said it had been buried underneath the foundation of the house and heavily warded by a witch to keep it unnoticeable by anyone except for Mark himself. 

' _Spellwork is tricky _,’ he’d said later with a humorless grin as he handed the briefcase over. ‘ _Magic harbored by witches and wizards today can’t deter the oldest of us out there, we’ve become a bit more immune to their influence. All I needed to do was a little digging and I found it_.’__

__‘ _I don’t—I’m thanking you a lot, aren’t I_?’ Chloe had found herself laughing as she accepted the briefcase’s weight. She’d expected its contents to weigh a lot more, but it was surprisingly light. _ _

__‘ _Thank Miller if you’re going to thank anybody. I was able to find it, but that’s only because she gave me a location for it in the first place_.’_ _

__Now, watching her mum’s trembling hands reach for the briefcase and the Skin it held, Chloe could only hold her breath and hope her decision hadn’t been the worst mistake of her life._ _


End file.
